Saturday Night Live will always have its ups and downs, so to take a
look at its shows so far this season by assigning them letter grades,
here’s a take on recent episodes this season:

Dane Cook, season opener -- B+. As
reviewed here last season, Dane Cook’s first guest hosting spot last
season was one of the stronger episodes last year. His appearance this
time leading off the latest season was apt because generous use of his
stand-up for the opening monologues which can be a tortured affair
especially when comedic songs are grafted onto hosts who don’t really
know how to take them over the top. Cook’s comic acting style fits well
into the current sensibility of the show, highlighted by a skit in which
delinquent Poland Springs deliverymen try to camouflage numerous emptied
bottles in their apartment.

Jamie Pressly -- B. This episode kept
its head above water, with a highlight being a NASCARettes sketch, in
which NASCAR cheerleaders make the mistake of doing their thing on the
track itself. Recurring short films called New York Stories featuring
Amy Poehler and Fred Armisen together playing pairings of people like
Rosie Perez and Lou Reed also raised the quality of this episode.

John C. Reilly -- B minus. This
episode’s strongest moments came in its first half-hour, namely in
sketches featuring Reilly as a predatory swimming coach with Will
Forte’s unlikely Olympian, Reilly as a racist Colonial Williamsburg
employee, the recurring A-Holes characters by Jason Sudeikis and Kristen
Wiig, and lastly Amy Poehler’s outlandish Kim Jong-Il impression. The
latter part of the show went downhill rapidly though, with a thrice
recurring sketch featuring Reilly as a deluded dad trying to have
special moments with his son, which just didn’t break a laugh threshold,
and a truly terrible experiment at going for meta commenting comedy,
“The Bear Shark Project.”

Hugh Laurie -- C minus. This episode
was particularly disappointing, considering Laurie’s pedigree from the
British comedy duo of Fry & Laurie. The first skit, a spoof of a Ghost
Hunters cable show, turned out to be an extended fart joke -- with
infrared vision showing the source of the emanations -- a lot of trouble
to go to for something that really fell flat. … The episode was only
really saved by its opening appearance by Sasha Baron Cohen’s Borat
character, which has nothing to do with what SNL can present on its own,
and Will Forte’s return to the Tim Calhoun bewildered politician
character, which hasn’t been seen for awhile on the show. Without these,
this episode would be graded a D at best.

The episodes slated next, with hosts Alec Baldwin and rapper/actor
Ludacris do seem to have potential to top these, as Baldwin always seems
to greatly improve the show in his many guest hosting appearances, and
Ludacris is a talented performer who promises to inject a different
quality into the show if used right. At least Darrell Hammond, who seems
to only get used selectively so far, gets his props tonight with a Best
Of compilation.